1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for capturing images, a method of controlling the exposure in the apparatus, a method of capturing images, and a computer readable medium storing a program for the method of capturing images, and more particularly, to an apparatus for capturing images, a method of controlling the exposure in the apparatus, a method of capturing images, and a computer readable medium storing a program for the images capturing method in which hand shake blur and noise, which are caused due to a relatively long exposure time in a high brightness when capturing an image in a dark environment like at night or indoors, are reduced.
2. Description of the Related Art
Examples of methods of reducing hand shake blur are an optical hand-shake correction method and an electronic hand-shake correction method. The optical hand-shake correction method moves the position of a lens with respect to an image sensor or the position of the image sensor with respect to the lens in the opposite direction to a hand shake direction. The electronic hand shake correction method forms an image with little hand shake blur using an exposure control algorithm.
Meanwhile, an apparatus for capturing images provides sufficient amount of exposure to the image sensor by increasing the exposure time of a shutter when brightness decreases. However, when the exposure time of the shutter is simply increased to ensure appropriate exposure amount in a low luminance environment such as at night, hand shake is caused and thus an image is shaken accordingly, thereby blurring the image. Also, when using an electronic flash, a near subject is photographed too bright, and a far subject is photographed too dark. Thus it is difficult to obtain natural looking images.
Accordingly, in the conventional art, a degradation of image quality is prevented by controlling the exposure time of a shutter according to the brightness to be shorter than usual (i.e., increasing the shutter speed as compared to the usual case) using an electronic method. However, when the exposure time is shortened, the exposure is shortened, and thus the image is darkened.